Paul and Lucy Spadoni periodically live in Tuscany to explore Paul’s Italian roots, practice their Italian and enjoy “la dolce vita.”
All work is copyrighted and may not be reprinted without written permission from the author, who can be contacted at www.paulspadoni.com

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Ancient family ties, common interest bind me to cousin Carlo Spadoni

Monday, April 16

Education and psychology have their share of buzzwords, many
of which I have learned and since forgotten during the 31 years I was a
teacher. One that has stuck with me is the term closure, which can be defined
as filling in the gaps, or reaching a state of resolution, conclusion or
completeness. A simple analogy can be made by comparing closure to the feeling
of fitting the final piece of a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle in place.

Today I feel a sense of closure on my Spadoni family tree
research, not in the sense that I will cease adding names or lose interest in
meeting relatives, but more in the sense that I have found everything I could
have hoped to find when I set out on this journey. My encounter this evening
with Carlo Spadoni feels like I have put in place the final piece.

Two days ago, I received an e-mail from Carlo. He obtained
my address from Andrea Mandroni, the archivist
who helped me trace my family back to 1600 and then showed me how it fit into a
family tree done by a local Spadoni family that took the family line back to
1430. Carlo is the man who spearheaded this research, and unlike my closer
Italian relatives in Italy, he shares my interest in family history and is
eager to talk about it.

We meet in our apartment at Casolare and enjoy Lucy’s
homemade apple crisp, topped with gelato, as we share information about our immediate
families, and I question him about the greater Spadoni family in Italy. He gives
me a 90-page book containing the story of his research into the Spadoni family of
Stignano. It includes photos and transcriptions of ancient documents and very
brief notations of events that took place, such as a notation that 1631 was an
Anno Pestilentie, a year of widespread disease.

The book focuses on Stignano, Carlo says, because this is
where one finds the first records of the Spadoni family in this region.
Stignano is a hill town, on the same set of hills surrounding the Pescia valley
as Montecatini Alto, Buggiano Castello and Montecarlo. Prior to the 1600s, the
flatlands below were swampy, full of mosquitos and subject to frequent
flooding. The grand duke of Tuscany made the problem worse by damming up
the rivers to create a lake for his fishing vacations. Local residents had
little choice but to farm the hillsides.

When the lake and swamps were drained by a series of canals
and levies, the areas below opened up for farming wheat, corn and other grains,
and people of the hillside cities moved into the lowlands, which had been
enriched by soil deposits from the years of flooding. Many of the Spadoni
families, my ancestors included, moved to Ponte Buggianese. Not a single
Spadoni remains in Stignano today.

But with the groundwork that Carlo has done, it is theoretically
possible for every Spadoni family in the area to do what I have done. By
tracing my line back as far as my Stignano ancestor, I can see how I am related
to Carlo. We are very distant cousins, since our branches diverged in the late
1400s. He is descended from Michele, born around 1480, and my line comes from
Michele’s brother Bartolomeo, born around 1490. Not important, Carlo says. We
are still cousins, and I agree wholeheartedly.

What about the other Spadonis who now live in Ponte Buggianese and Borgo a Buggiano, I want to know. They are all descendants of the Stignano
family, Carlo says. I am delighted to hear this confirmation, as it means that
I have been correct when I told members of the Chicago and Seattle Spadoni
families that I believe we are related. All of the Seattle family and most of
the Spadonis in Chicago come from Ponte Buggianese and Borgo a Buggiano. If they
can trace their lines back to Stignano, we can find the specific connection.
This also means that the Spadoni who was sindaco
of Ponte Buggianese around 1900 is a relative, as was Italo Spadoni, who has a
street named after him with a memorial affixed to the wall of the city’s
central piazza.

Can you see any family resemblance? Carlo says his blue eyes come from his mother.

Carlo also knows that the father of Michele and Bartolomeo, Francesco, moved from a little town called Marliana, about eight miles deeper in the mountains behind Stignano. Francesco’s father, also named Bartolomeo, certainly came from Marliana. I’ll have to put that on my list of places to visit next year. Beyond
that, Carlo has no records. We are fortunate, he says, that the churches and
government offices in this region kept such detailed records, because many
Italian families in other parts of the country can’t trace their roots nearly as
deeply as we have.

As for the surname Spadoni, he does not know when that originated
or if we are connected to the other Spadoni families in other Italian provinces.
A number of early descendants had the middle name Romolo or Romola, so that
could suggest a Roman origin, but that is only speculation. One thing he does
know is that nearly every Spadoni ancestor he found is listed as a contadino, a country farmer. No kings or
counts, I joke? No, he says quickly, and from his expression, I detect that
like me, he is proud to know that his ancestors were diligent, hard-working
people of the soil, surviving the perils of the centuries by sweat and honest
labor.

As Carlo departs, we promise to keep in touch, and I sense
the reason we feel an extra element of kinship is that not only do we share the
same last name but we also share a reverence for family and for the sacrifices
our forebears made to provide for the generations that were to come. Finding
this simpatico distant cousin near
the completion of our six-month sojourn gives me a feeling of completeness, of conclusion.
Suddenly the word closure is much more than just a buzzword to me.

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About Me

First off, before you hassle me about our title, Lucy thought of it. Yes, I know some people may think broad is derogatory, but the etymology is uncertain and she doesn’t find it offensive, and it made me laugh. We have been married since 1974 and are empty-nesters now, which allows me to bring my submerged Italophilia into the open. We first came to live in Italy from February-April in 2011 and have returned during the same months every year. From 2011-2015, we lived in San Salvatore, at the foot of the hilltop city Montecarlo, where my paternal grandparents were born, raised and, in 1908, married. In late 2015, we bought a home in Montecarlo. We come for a variety of purposes: We want to re-establish contact with distant cousins in both Nonno’s and Nonna’s families, we want to learn the language and see what it is like to live as Italians in modern Italy, we like to travel and experience different cultures. Even if we aren’t successful at achieving these purposes, we love Italy and enjoy every moment here, so there is no chance we will be disappointed. I am grateful to God for giving me a wife who is beautiful, clever, adaptable and willing to jump into my dreams wholeheartedly.